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‘It’s all gone so terribly wrong,’ she found herself whispering into the silence. ‘Her husband walked out on her a couple of weeks ago. The marriage is over. And now Ava’s gone, too. Just gone...’ She had to stop and take a very shaky breath. ‘And I can’t really blame her. She’s devastated and, as she told me, it’s not really her baby. It was my egg. And now...now it’s my baby and...and I have no idea what I’m going to do...’
Luke’s frown had deepened but he was still listening. Nodding very slowly. ‘And the father?’
‘Marco? I don’t think he’s coming back. Apparently he said he’d never really wanted a baby in the first place.’ Ellie’s voice was stronger now. She was on much more solid ground. ‘And I don’t want him to.’
An eyebrow quirked under that shaggy fringe but Ellie saw the subtle lift of the corners of Luke’s mouth. He liked what he was hearing, she realised, and that made her want to say a whole lot more.
‘I thought I could do it, you know? Donate an egg and carry a baby for someone else. I thought I could hand him over the minute he was born and then just be...I don’t know...a kind of auntie, I guess. We’d planned to tell him eventually. When he was old enough to understand.’
‘But...?’
‘It was when I heard him cry...’ Again, Ellie had to stop talking to try and deal with the flood of emotion but, this time, it wasn’t anything to do with loss or grief. This was joy, pure and simple. ‘That was when I knew that this was my baby. That I could never give him away. That he’s...he’s the most important thing in my life now...’
Ellie had to scrub away an errant tear but it didn’t matter. Luke looked as though he was blinking back some extra moisture in his own eyes. And his voice sounded a bit rusty when he spoke again.
‘Have you given him a name?’
Ellie sniffed inelegantly and then smiled. ‘I had the best dad in the world. He was a forestry worker and got killed in an industrial accident when I was only six but I’ve never forgotten how much he loved me. How much I loved him. His name was James but everyone called him Jamie.’ She had to use the fingers of both hands to wipe her cheeks this time. ‘So that’s what I’m going to call him. Jamie.’
As if he’d heard his name, the baby stirred and started to cry. Ellie turned and leaned towards the bassinet but then froze, unable to stop her gasp of pain. It wasn’t just the stitches in a very tender place. Her whole body felt bruised and battered right now.
‘Let me...’
Luke got to his feet in a smooth movement that was both relaxed and confident. He picked up the swaddled bundle of baby but he didn’t immediately hand him to Ellie. He stood there, holding the baby in his arms, patting him gently as he smiled down at the tiny face.
‘Hi, Jamie,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome to the world...’
Jamie hiccupped and then stopped crying. Luke stopped patting and started rubbing the baby’s back, his hand looking huge against the small bundle.
‘You made a bit of a dramatic entrance,’ Luke continued quietly, still smiling. ‘You had us a bit worried there for a while, mate.’
Ellie was lying back on her pillows as the pain subsided. There was something about watching this big man holding her tiny baby that was doing funny things to her heart and making her want to cry all over again.
Her hormones were all over the place right now, weren’t they?
And then she felt her cheeks flush. ‘I haven’t even said thank you,’ she said. ‘You saved Jamie’s life...probably mine, too.’
It seemed as if Jamie had gone back to sleep but Luke didn’t put him back into the bassinet. He perched on the bed again, holding the bundle as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said. ‘The best job I’ve had since I came back.’
So had they been just a ‘job’ to him? Just another case and one that would be remembered for snatching success from imminent disaster? Oddly, the disappointment felt crushing.
‘Back?’ Ellie was relieved to achieve a casual tone.
‘I’ve been working in Australia pretty much since I graduated from medical school. I’ve taken a three month locum here because I needed some time to sort my parents’ estate. And I was ready for a change so it’s a good time to take a break and reassess my future.’
So he was a locum. And he was only here for three months.
‘I’ve heard about a couple of great positions already,’ he continued. ‘I’m tossing up whether I want to apply for the one in London or Boston right now. Both of them are in major trauma centres that deal with things you’d be lucky to ever see in Auckland.’
The disappointment was still there, ready to roll in on another wave. How weird was that? Was it because he represented a link to the past? They’d been to the same school. They would know a lot of the same people in the area Ellie had grown up in. She’d already lost so many links to that happy part of her early life and it had seemed as if the last one had gone with Ava’s disappearance.
She swallowed hard. ‘Yeah...I guess that’s exactly what I have to do now. Reassess my future.’
A whimper from the baby prompted Luke to move. This time he transferred the bundle into Ellie’s arms. And then he caught her gaze. He didn’t have to say anything.
She was holding her future.
‘Are you going to manage?’ he asked quietly. ‘Have you got family and friends to support you?’
‘No family,’ Ellie said. ‘But I’ve got some good friends. You’ve met Sue, in ED? Well, she’s organising an emergency baby shower. I don’t have anything. Not even a nappy...’
She had to look away from that steady gaze. She didn’t want him to know how terrifying it was. In a day or two, she had to take this brand new little person back to a totally inappropriate inner city apartment where there was barely enough room for herself, let alone a baby and all the gear she was going to need, like a cot and a pram and stacks of nappies.
She didn’t even know how she was going to pay the rent on that apartment...
Luke was pulling a pen from the top pocket of his scrubs. He fished out a small notebook and ripped out a page.
‘This is my phone number,’ he told her. ‘If you ever need help, ring me.’
Ellie’s eyes widened.
Luke grinned. ‘No, I don’t usually do this for my patients. But you’re special. You’re an old bus buddy so we go way back, even if my memory’s a bit hazy.’
Ellie pressed her lips together. Her memory was getting less hazy by the minute. She had noticed Luke every time he’d sauntered down the bus aisle past her seat. The bad boy who’d been expelled from every school he’d been to until he got to Kauri Valley. The angry kid who’d somehow morphed into the coolest one. The one that every girl had been desperate to be with...
He put the scrap of paper on the top of her locker.
‘Want me to get someone for you? Do you need help with Jamie? Or some pain relief or anything?’
‘I think I’m ready to sleep,’ Ellie told him. ‘Jamie seems to be settled again. Could you put him back in the bassinet for me, please?’
She watched as he carefully positioned the baby on his side and then tucked the sheet securely around him. There was nothing more he needed to do but he paused for a long moment—that big, artistic looking hand cupping the baby’s head so gently that the spikes of dark hair barely moved. Ellie could feel that touch herself and it felt as if it were cupping her heart.
He was quite something now, this grown up bad boy.
‘Sweet dreams, little guy,’ Luke murmured.
And then, with a smile, he was gone, letting himself out of Ellie’s room as quietly as he’d come in. He left the door slightly ajar and she could hear the muted sounds of a maternity ward on night shift. The distant cry of another baby. Soft-soled shoes going past in the corridor.
Her baby was asleep and she needed to rest herself. It was the only opportunity she was going to get to heal and gather her strength for what lay ahead.
Adjusting her body to find a more comfortable position, Ellie could see the top of her locker where that scrap of paper lay beside her water glass.
He’d said they were ‘bus buddies’, she remembered.
He’d said that she was special...
He’d given her his phone number to use if she needed help.
Not that she would, but having it there somehow made her immediate future look a little less terrifying.
Ellie drifted into much-needed sleep unaware of the curve of her lips.
She was special...
CHAPTER THREE
THE BABY WAS about six weeks old.
A little girl, called Grace, but that didn’t stop Luke Gilmore being instantly reminded of Jamie Thomas.
It had been more than two weeks since he’d delivered Ellie’s baby in such a dramatic fashion. It felt like a long time since he’d shared what seemed like a surprisingly intimate conversation, late that night in her room.
He would never have recognised Ellie from that time in his past. What he had been prompted to remember was a girl with long blonde braids who had been too timid to interest him. The girl who wore the hats—Ava—used to stare at him but Ellie was also memorable for the way she avoided eye contact.
She hadn’t been avoiding it the other night. Quite the opposite. When she had been telling him about the surrogacy arrangement that had gone so wrong and particularly when she’d explained how hearing the baby’s first cry had changed her for ever, she’d held his gaze with an intensity that had made him feel as if he was glimpsing a part of her soul.
A courageous soul, he had realised. And a generous one.
She’d been prepared to do something for a friend that went way beyond the normal boundaries of friendship. And she hadn’t been planning to raise a child on her own but was facing what could be a difficult future with such determination—and such obvious love for the baby she had now claimed as purely her own.
He had to admire that.
To admire Ellie.
And, man...as he’d kept going back to that time together in his head—more often than he was comfortable with, to be honest—he realised that Ellie had matured into a very attractive young woman. Her hair was more honey than white blonde now and, thanks to her avoidance of eye contact, he’d never noticed how astonishingly blue her eyes were. There was a softness about her features, too, that he could imagine being the result of a timid, sensitive teenager gaining confidence with time.
This baby who had just come into the emergency department of North Shore General was crying miserably. So was the mother who was holding her as the nurse, Sue, helped to settle her on the bed. The young father was hovering on the other side of the bed, looking stressed and helpless.
‘We thought it was just a cold,’ he told Luke. ‘But now she’s got this horrible cough and it sounds like she can’t breathe...’
‘Has anyone else in the family been unwell?’ Luke was looking carefully at the baby as Sue undressed her. The baby looked dehydrated but not feverish and, thankfully, there were no signs of a rash that could be meningococcal.
‘I’ve had a bit of a cough,’ the father said. ‘Nothing major. Just one of those irritating dry coughs that won’t go away. I heard someone call it the “Hundred Day” cough.’
Luke’s heart sank as he met Sue’s glance as she helped position the baby so that he could put his stethoscope on the tiny chest. For adults or immunised people, the ‘Hundred Day’ cough was an irritating bug. For babies like this, it could be the life-threatening bacterial infection of whooping cough.
And, sure enough, the baby started coughing. It was too young to have the strength to produce the characteristic ‘whooping’ sound of gasping for air between the coughing spasms but they were severe enough to be causing a dangerous lack of oxygen and both Luke and Sue watched with deepening concern as the blue tinge to the baby’s face advertised a degree of cyanosis that was going to need urgent management.
‘See if we’ve got an oxygen hood in the department,’ Luke said to Sue. ‘And put out a call for an urgent paediatric consult.’
‘I’m going to take a swab,’ he told the mother, ‘and some blood tests but it looks very likely that she has pertussis—whooping cough. We’re going to need to admit her and keep her in isolation.’
‘Whooping cough?’ The mother looked terrified. ‘But that’s impossible. I had the booster vaccination that they recommend when you’re pregnant. They said that would help keep her safe until she gets her first shot next week.’
‘And it does help. You did exactly the right thing.’ Luke nodded. ‘Did everybody in your extended family get boosters, too?’
‘My mother did. I told Gerry that he should get one but...’ The woman glanced up at her husband, who was looking stricken. ‘I guess we kind of forgot...’
‘Work’s been crazy,’ he muttered. ‘And what with Serena having to give up her job, I’ve had to take all the overtime I could get.’ He turned away, putting his hand over his eyes. ‘Oh... God...is this my fault?’
‘The important thing is looking after little Grace, here.’ Luke was pulling supplies from the containers on the bench in this resuscitation area. A tourniquet, the smallest cannula available for IV access, tape and the connecting plug that would enable him to set up a drip. ‘We’re going to start her on antibiotics without waiting for the test results. And we’re going to try and improve her oxygen levels. You must have noticed the way she’s going blue with the coughing fits? That means she’s not getting enough oxygen and that can be dangerous.’
Another nurse came in with the oxygen hood that Luke had requested.
‘We’ll get you to put Grace on the bed by herself, now,’ Luke said gently. ‘This looks scary but it’s just a plastic dome that will go over her head on the bed. It’s an easier way to provide extra oxygen than taping prongs into her nose.’
It was clearly hard for the mother to hand her baby into the care of others and step back, out of touching range. Her husband put his arms around her as she sobbed.
‘Can we stay?’ he asked. ‘Is that all right?’
‘Of course,’ Luke said. ‘And I’ll tell you what we’re doing every step of the way. The first thing we need to do is to put a tiny needle into one of Grace’s veins. Given how small she is, it might need to go into a vein in her scalp, or her foot, but don’t be alarmed. It’s just the same as putting one in an adult’s arm.’
The new nurse was staying to help Sue hold the baby as Luke began to work on starting treatment that would, hopefully, save this baby from the potentially life-threatening complications from whooping cough that were running through his head right now. Luke had seen babies develop pneumonia and encephalitis from this disease. He’d once looked after a baby in Intensive Care who had needed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, even, where the blood was removed from the body to do the work of the lungs in the same way a heart-lung bypass machine worked.
The sad thing was that this was a preventable disease but he could understand how the idea of having a booster vaccination had seemed unimportant to the father of this baby.
With the cannula safely secured into a scalp vein, Luke had a moment of distraction with the automatic process of attaching the IV line and setting the drip rate of the fluids.
Had Ellie had a booster vaccination while she was pregnant? How many visitors was little Jamie getting and was he in close enough contact with any of them to be in danger of having something like this passed on? A sideways glance at Sue, who was positioning the plastic dome of the oxygen hood over Grace’s head, prompted Luke to make a mental note to talk to her about it. Ellie had told him that Sue was a good friend of hers. She could, at least, pass on the warning that they’d had a serious case here.
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